


for a little absolution

by onakissgodknows



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Pre-Series, Religious Conflict, kat/julia is mentioned, tomas/marcus and tomas/omc both also mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18728356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onakissgodknows/pseuds/onakissgodknows
Summary: Kat Rance goes to confession for the first time since her accident. Tomas Ortega tries to help.





	for a little absolution

**Author's Note:**

> This is very blatant self-indulgence wherein I project all of my personal views onto fictional characters. 
> 
> I am not Catholic (though I am a Christian) so I apologize for any misconceptions about Catholicism that might appear in this fic. Thanks to my Catholic friends for talking this clueless Lutheran through how confession actually works!

It’s close to the end of Tomas’s time in the confessional for the day. He’s heard from a handful of his parish – mostly minor transgressions like a woman who stole twenty bucks from her sister (Tomas told her to apologize and give it back before absolving her).

That’s the thing about confession. More often than not, the sins are minor – good Catholic people working themselves up over nothing. The fun part of Tomas’s job comes when he can tell them they have nothing to worry about, and they leave the confessional like the weight of the world has come off their shoulders.

Tomas checks his watch. It’s close enough that he could just call off now, exit the confessional early and just head home. He might have time to stop and visit Olivia and Luis on his way. However, just as he’s about to get up, he hears someone approaching.

Shuffle, step, clack. Shuffle, step, clack.

A number of Tomas’s parishioners are elderly, require walkers to get around, so it’s not unusual for Tomas to hear such noises approaching the confessional, but the person ducks into the confessional and leans something up against the wall and Tomas realizes it’s crutches, not a walker.

The person gets down next to the closed screen and sighs. “It’s been a long time since I did this, so if I screw it up, I’m sorry. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned?” The voice is a youthful one. Female. Tomas thinks he recognizes it.

Tomas smiles. “That’s a good start. And how long, exactly, has it been since your last confession?”

“Um.” The young woman sounds a little thrown off. “I’m not sure. A couple years? I, um, haven’t been a very good Catholic.”

“That’s okay,” Tomas assures her quickly. “God is not going anywhere, so long as you come back to Him.”

The girl is silent for a few moments. Tomas waits. “When you confess, Father,” she says, “do you feel relieved after? Like – is the guilt gone?”

Tomas considers. “Sometimes, yes. But that’s our human nature, to continue to worry, even though that is not God’s will. Through confession, our sins are forgiven, and you should rest easy.”

Tomas can hear the girl’s breathing through the screen. “Father, I’m here because I think I killed someone.”

Tomas raises his eyebrows. “You think?” He knows who he’s speaking to, but he can’t see her face so he won’t say her name.

She sighs, and Tomas is sure she knows _he_ knows who she is. “I was driving and got in an accident,” she says flatly, clearly trying to say it as quickly and emotionlessly as possible, “and my passenger…died.”

“And you believe you’re responsible?”

“Well, I was driving. And the police report says I’m at fault for the accident, so, legally, yeah.”

“But in the eyes of God?”

She’s quiet again for a moment longer. “Thou shalt not kill, right?”

“But what was in your _heart_?” Tomas leans forward. “Did you intend to hurt your friend? Did you cause the accident on purpose, hoping for what happened?”

“No!” She sounds shaken.

“Of course not. This is not a sin. You had no intent to cause harm. You have nothing to confess.”

“Then God is punishing me by killing her!” she shoots back. “If I didn’t do it, then He did! He saw what was in my heart and He didn’t like it.”

“No!” Tomas says emphatically. He wonders if he’s overstepping his bounds.

“God saw what I was thinking when I looked at her, and punished me by killing her!”

“That is not the way He works.” Arguing with a parishioner in the confessional; is this what he became a priest for?

“Then how does it work?” the girl snaps. “Isn’t adultery a sin?”

Tomas thinks of Jessica. He clears his throat to distract himself. “Well – yes.”

“Impure thoughts about someone you’re not married to. Well, there you go. Then maybe I killed her after all.” She pauses again. “It’s hard to keep on being Catholic in a time like this. If I believe in God, then I have to believe He did this, right? But if I don’t…..”

“The thing about God,” says Tomas, “is that He’s here whether or not you believe. And He loves you.”

She sighs again. “Can’t you just tell me to say ten Hail Marys and let me go?”

“I am not keeping you here. You are free to leave.”

Another long pause. “Maybe God made me wrong. Do you think He might have done that?”

“No,” says Tomas, as sure as he’s ever been sure of anything. “No, God made us all perfect in His image. I do not believe He made a mistake.”

“Okay, Lady Gaga.” Finally, Tomas can hear a smile in her voice. “I still have to say a Hail Mary, though, right? For what I was thinking about her.”

Tomas slowly exhales. All of his training says yes, thoughts of a sexual nature towards someone to whom one is not married are a sin, and many priests would insist it goes double for same-sex desires. But how can he in good conscience tell this troubled young woman anything that would only strengthen her sorrow? Confession is supposed to ease the soul, not cause further distress. “I think we can let this go.”

“What?” Again, she’s surprised.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“I – of course not, but – “

“I do not believe you have done anything that constitutes mortal sin, and I do not believe you should further trouble yourself,” Tomas says firmly. “I pray that God might ease your mind and lessen your grief.”

“Th-thank you, Father.” She sounds utterly bewildered.

“Go in peace.”

The young woman clambers slowly to her feet, and Tomas hears her picking up the crutches and shuffling away. He checks his watch – past time to go home. Tomas stands with a groan, stretching his legs. He loosens his collar and heads back to his office to clean up before closing down.

When he leaves his office, he pauses by the baptismal font and dips his fingers in the holy water, murmurs a soft prayer as he crosses himself. As he looks up, he sees a figure sitting in the back row – Kat Rance, crutches leaned against the pew and bad leg stretched out in the aisle.

Tomas quickly walks to her. “Katherine,” he says when he reaches her side. Kat looks up, face framed by perfectly coiled blonde hair. “Are you waiting for a ride home? Your mother?”

Kat laughs humorlessly. “No, just trying to get the strength to walk back to the train station.”

Tomas raises his eyebrows. “You took the El all the way here?”

Kat sighs. “Few stops on the El and a lot of hopping around on the crutches. All that for a little absolution.” With a groan, she braces her hands on the back of the pew in front of her and hauls herself to her feet. Tomas quickly hands her the crutches and Kat takes them with a small smile.

“Let me drive you home, Kat,” Tomas says.

“Oh, no – Father Tomas, don’t bother. Don’t treat me any different, okay?”

“I would do the same for any of my parish, crutches or no crutches,” Tomas says. “I insist.” He gives her a smile. “Besides, I would like to see your father. How is he doing?”

Kat rolls her eyes. “You know dear old Dad. Half the time he looks at me and it’s like he’s staring right through. Like I’m not even his daughter.”

“It is not his fault,” Tomas says gently. He puts a hand on Kat’s upper back and guides her out the door of the church to his car.

“Yeah, I know.”

Tomas helps her into the car and nestles her crutches next to her, then gets in the driver’s seat and starts the engine. Between Henry’s accident and now Kat’s, he has driven to the Rance house enough times in recent months that he doesn’t need Kat to direct him, so they drive in silence for a few minutes (rather, they sit in rush hour Chicago traffic silently for a few minutes).

“Hypothetically,” Kat starts, then stops and looks at him. Tomas raises his eyebrows, waiting for her to go on. Kat takes a deep breath. “When you talk to people in the confessional, do you mean what you say, or do you just say what you think they need to hear?”

Tomas frowns, thinking. It’s not as simple an answer as Kat might want. “Is it wrong to say it’s both?” he finally answers. “Kat, many things people say to me in the confessional are very simple transgressions, a minor misunderstanding between siblings or husband and wife. I usually tell them to make amends as best they can, say a Hail Mary if it’s necessary. It’s not my place to coddle my parishioners, but I also don’t want to cause undue distress either.” Kat does not seem mollified, so Tomas continues, “Sometimes, people come to confession prepared to confess things that are not their fault. In cases like that, I tell them as much, and mean it.”

Traffic is breaking up; Tomas navigates his way off the main streets into the residential neighborhoods as Kat sits silently beside him.

Perhaps this was a mistake. Perhaps there are lines he shouldn’t cross, but what kind of man of God lets an injured girl hobble home on her crutches when he can drive her; if this is unconventional then so be it.

He thinks about Kat, sitting there quietly, obviously still in pain and upset that her absolution hasn’t spared her guilt or grief. He thinks about Julia, the girl who died in the car accident while Kat lived. He thinks about the break in Kat’s voice when she talked about blaming herself for Julia’s death.

There are things good, ordinary Catholics don’t talk about, but Tomas has never been very ordinary.

“Kat, do you mind if I share something with you?”

Kat’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “Is this going to be like one of your sermons? I’ve got to be honest, Father, I kind of tune them out.”

Tomas laughs out loud, taken aback by her candor. “No. Well, I wouldn’t use this in a sermon. You can tell me when we get to your house whether or not I’m preaching.”

“All right, fine. I’m doped up on pain meds anyway, I might doze off.”

Kat has not seemed at all doped up.

Tomas clears his throat, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “When I was in school – college, so your age or a little younger, I had a friend. He was like me, he intended to go to seminary after we graduated. Very Catholic, though.”

Kat snorts. “Are you saying you’re not _very Catholic_?”

Tomas tries to see himself through Kat’s eyes – and yes, okay, he is very Catholic. But that doesn’t mean he and Kat aren’t more alike than different.

There are things, though, he can’t bring himself to say out loud, things that are much too dangerous, so at the last moment he alters the details of the story he’s telling Kat.

“He came to me talking about, um, another friend of ours, another young man.” He’s never talked about this out loud and did not really think this through. He does not know how to word this in a Catholic way. “He was concerned that his feelings for this other young man were becoming – something more than friendship.” He thinks about the day Kat’s mother Angela came to see him to tell him about Kat’s accident and the death of her friend, the delicate emphasis she’d placed on the word “friend,” like there was something more she was avoiding.

“Father.” Kat tenses up, like she’s sure she’s about to be reprimanded, but Tomas raises a hand to still her.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s not our place to pass judgement on anyone. That is not where I’m going with this.” He suddenly feels quite inadequate, but goes on anyway. “My friend was extremely concerned about the way he was feeling out of fear that God would reject him. Punish him, even.” He steals a glance at Kat to see how she’s reacting; her face is blank.

Tomas knows what he believes goes against the standard belief of the church. He loves his job; disagreements and all, he believes that he has done good for his community and does not want to lose that. Kat Rance is not the type to run tattling to his boss. He takes a deep breath. “The Church is an organization founded by man. I do not believe we can truly know what God is thinking, but we do have His word. And my interpretation of His word is such that – that He would never reject or punish someone because of who they love.” There’s a little voice in his head shrieking that maybe he only tells himself this to make himself feel better, to absolve himself of the guilt. He thinks about the dreams he’s had lately, of a tall man in a black hat and how he’s felt like he’s half in love with this stranger.

“So what did your friend say?” Kat asks, her face unreadable.

Tomas clears his throat. “We had a long talk. Most of us Catholics grow up believing that God does not favor those who find themselves attracted to their own sex. But I – I disagree.”

“Why?” Kat asks, sounding bewildered and almost disgusted.

_Because God speaks to me regardless._

“The God I know is a loving God,” he says to Kat. “It seems so…disingenuous to believe he would disregard any of his children for something so arbitrary. For _love_.” He feels his heart beating faster, the way it does when he thinks too hard about this. “I cannot in good conscience tell someone that their love is a sin.”

“You’re right, that’s not very Catholic of you,” Kat says, sounding a little bitter. “Wouldn’t you get in trouble if the church knew you thought that?”

Tomas shrugs. “Maybe. But what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” He thinks about that young man he’d known in college. How his lips felt when they kissed. The guilt that came with it and how long it had taken him to stop burying it.

The relationship had gone nowhere, both of them too confused and too Catholic to know what to do with it, but that kiss is burned into Tomas’s memory like a brand. It was not a mistake. “The only thing I know is that God loves all His children.” It’s all he’s ever believed. It’s the only thing he’s never doubted in his life, the fact that God loves him, loves him enough to send His son to die on the cross, for Tomas, for Tomas and all of humanity.

“What happened to your friend?” Kat asks him.

Tomas laughs a little sadly. “I believe he chose not to go to seminary. He found his calling elsewhere.” Probably somewhere that would allow him to openly live his truth. “He did not abandon his faith, though. As God did not abandon him.”

“Sometimes I think God abandoned me on that road,” Kat says.

They’ve reached the Rance home. The sun has almost disappeared over the horizon, and Tomas parks on the curb. He shakes his head. “He didn’t. Accidents happen. It’s a….consequence of our free will. God cannot interfere. But He mourns the same as you do, and he welcomed your friend with open arms.”

It’s only now he notices the tears on Kat’s cheeks. He doesn’t know if he’s helped.

Kat silently wipes her face with the back of her hand. “Can you help me get out of the car?”

“Of course.” Tomas unbuckles and gets out of the car, goes around and opens Kat’s door for her. He helps her out and gets her situated with her crutches. She doesn’t look him in the eyes.

“I won’t tell anyone what you said to me,” Kat says. “About your friend.” Tomas wonders if she’s gathered that his role in the story is more than he’s said. Even if she has, it doesn’t matter. He’d wanted her to know she and Tomas are more alike than she realized.

“I appreciate that,” Tomas says, “but please do not worry about me. I want you to take care of yourself, Kat.” He ducks his head, trying to meet her eyes. “I truly do believe God will be with you on this journey whether you realize it or not.”

“He can make himself known anytime.” Kat laughs humorlessly, taking a few steps towards her front door. “Do you want to come in, Father Tomas? My parents will be happy to see you, and Casey might be home.” Something in her voice tells Tomas that she’s not offering out of politeness; she really wants him to stay.

Tomas smiles. “Of course.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am struggling not to apologize for this because I know it is not my best work, but it is self-indulgence, so I hope someone else was able to get something from this too. Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
